February 24, 2012

Sacramento Bee senior photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. has been searching since 2005 for the identities of Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans whose images of forced relocation in 1942 were captured by acclaimed documentary photographer Dorothea Lange and the War Relocation Authority.
At first, Kitagaki's interest was personal. In 1984, he learned that Lange photographed his grandparents, father and aunt in 1942 as they awaited a bus in Oakland to begin their journey into detention. Kitagaki set out to create a collection of portraits mirroring Lange's work. For the first, he gathered his family at the same Oakland departure point six decades after they had been sent away. Lange's photographs document the moment their lives changed forever; Kitagaki's images record their enduring spirit.
Since then, Kitagaki has photographed more than 15 subjects, or their descendants, from the original internment images. It's an ongoing project. Kitagaki seeks the identities of others photographed by Lange and her counterparts.
To see Kitagaki's photo gallery, as well as the gallery of unidentified photographs, go to sacbee.com/multimedia. To provide Kitagaki with additional identities, contact him at: pkitagaki@sacbee.com(38 images)

THEN: Fumiko Hayashida, 31, carries her daughter Natalie Kayo, 13 months, as she prepares to board the ferry at Bainbridge Island, Wa. on March 30, 1942. Hayashida was among a large group of Japanese Americans who were taken by armed soldiers to the Manzanar Internment Camp in California after Executive Order 9066 was issued on February 19, 1942. Hayashida arrived at Manzanar by train on April 1, 1942. Photo Credit: Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History & Industry. NOW: Fumiko Hayashida, 95, and her daughter Natalie Ong, 66, photographed July 20, 2006 on the family farm where they were evacuated from Bainbridge Island, Wa. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Second-generation Japanese Americans, Helene Nakamoto Mihara, 7, left, and Mary Ann Yahiro, 7, center, recite the Pledge of Alligence at the Raphael Weill School in San Francisco, Calif. before being sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in Utah in April, 1942. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Mary Ann Yahiro,72, and Helene Nakamoto Mihara, 72, photographed on January 20, 2007. Mihara's father owned the America Fish Market in the Japantown section of San Francisco. He was arrested by the FBI but reunited with his family in the Topaz Internment Camp. Yahiro's parents were split up, her mother, a teacher who taught Japanese, was arrested and sent to a separate camp. She never saw her mother again. "I don't have bitterness like a lot of people might," she said. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Yukiko Okinaga Hayakawa, 2, spent three years interned in Block 2 at Manzanar Internment Camp with her single mother, Mikiko Hayakawa, 24, during WWII. The second generation Japanese-American was two years old when she was photographed by Clem Albers as she sat on her luggage at Union Station in Los Angeles after leaving their home Little Tokyo. Photograph by Clem AlbersNOW: Yukiko Okinaga Llewellyn, 66, on September 21, 2005 Lone Pine, Calif. She is a retired Assistant Dean of Students at the University of Illinois. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Shigeo Jerry Aso, 3, right, and his brother, Sadao Bill Aso 6, with their grandfather Sakutaro Aso, 70, were photographed by Dorothea Lange on May 8, 1942 in Hayward, Calif. as they waited for a bus to take them to Tanforan Assembly Center. Sakutaro Aso started the Mt. Eden Laundry in Hayward and sold the business before going to the Tanforan Assembly Center in Topaz Internment Camp and the Amache Internment Camp during WWII.
NOW: Bill Asano, 70, right, and his brother, Jerry Aso, 67, photographed in Portland, Ore. on September 1, 2006. They are both dental professionals.
"When I look at the picture I can see my grandfather realized that something terrible was happening and his life was never going to be the same again, that was the end of the line for him," Bill Asano said.
"So, (grandfather's) dream of coming to the United States, his dream of making a life, his dream of having his children working in this business, to support them all were totally dashed," Jerry Aso said. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Members of the Mochida family awaiting an evacuation bus in Hayward, Calif. Identification tags were used to aid in keeping the family unit intact during all phases of evacuation. Mochida operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township. He raised snapdragons and sweetpeas. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.
NOW: From the left, second-generation Japanese-Americans of the Mochida family are Hiroko Mochida, 69, Kayoko Ikuma,71, Satsuki Mae Ward, 75, Tooru Mochida,73, and seated Miyuki Hirano, 72. Photographed May 21, 2006. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Hiroko Mochida, 3, and Miyuki Mochida, 6, wait with their parents for an evacuation bus in Hayward, Ca. on May 8, 1942. Miyuki Mochida holds a sandwich given to her by a group of women from a local church. Photograph by Dorothea Lange.
NOW: Second-generation Japanese-Americans of the Mochida family are Hiroko Mochida, 69, and seated Miyuki Hirano, 72, photographed May 21, 2006. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Ted Miyata, stands with his mother, Nami Miyata 53, in a strawberry field at Florin and Power Inn Roads near Sacramento, Calif. Miyata, 23, volunteered for military service July 10, 1941, and was stationed at Camp Leonard Wood, Mo. He was furloughed to help his mother and family prepare for their evacuation. He is the youngest of six children, two of them volunteers in the U.S. Army. Nami Miyata came from Japan 37 years ago. Her husband died 21 years ago, leaving her to raise six children. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Donna Nakashima, 45, poses for a portrait in 2007 in a field at Florin and Power Inn Roads where her grandmother Nami Miyata farmed strawberries before WWII. Nakashima holds the U.S. army dog tags and hat that belonged to her father, Ted Miyata, and the flag that was presented to her family at his funeral in 2001. He served as a medic in the heavily-decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team in Europe and worked after the war as a pharmacist in Chicago, Ill. where Nakashima was raised. "I think in this picture my grandmom and dad look happy," she said. "I don't know why."

THEN: Itaru Ina, right, foreground, stands in the Tule Lake interment camp jail during WWII before he was sent to the Department of Justice Interment camp for enemy aliens in at Fort LIncoln, Bismarck, N.D. Photograph from the National Archives and Records AdministrationNOW: Satsuki Ina, 67, was born at the Tule Lake segregation center in Tule Lake, Calif. She stands in the jail cell where her father, Itaru, was held before he was sent to a Department of Justice Internment camp for enemy aliens in Bismarck, North Dakota. Ina's American-born parents were interned first at Topaz internment camp and then the Tule Lake Segregation Camp after both answered "No" to loyalty questions No. 27 and No. 28 that many Japanese-Americans considered tricks that could leave people stateless.
Ina is a psychotherapist specializing in trauma and a retired professor from Sacramento State. She produced two documentaries on the Japanese-American experience during WWII and won a Northern Califonia Emmy award for the documentary, "From a Silk Cocoon." Photographed on July 1, 2006 in Tule Lake, Calif. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: A large group of Japanese Americans walks down the pier to board the ferry at Bainbridge Island, Wash. on March 30, 1942. Escorted by armed soldiers, they were being taken to the Manzanar Internment Camp in California after Executive Order 9066 was issued on February 19, 1942. Photo Credit: Post-Intelligencer Collection, Museum of History & Industry. All rights reserved.NOW:
Fumiko Hayashida, 95, second from right, with her extended family, the Nishinaka's and Hayashida's, photographed on July 20, 2006 at the old Eagledale Ferry landing on Bainbridge Island, Wash. The site is now the Bainbridge Island Japanese American Exclusion Memorial. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Harvey Akio Itano, 21, a 1942 graduate of the University of California, Berkeley where he received his B.S. Degree in Chemistry sits in his quarters at the Tule Lake Internment Camp. Chosen by the faculty as the University Medalist of 1942, Itano was a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi. Itano was evacuated to the assembly center prior to the commencement exercises at which President Robert Gordon Sproul said, "He cannot be with us today. His country has called him elsewhere." Photograph by Lange, Dorothea, May 20, 1942NOW: Dr. Harvey Akio Itano, 85, photographed at his home on March 7, 2007 in La Jolla, Calif. He was a co-discoverer of the genetic cause of sickle cell anemia while working with Dr. Linus Pauling at Cal Tech in 1949.
Itano, a Sacramento resident, was interned at Tule Lake Interment camp and was the first student able to continue his studies and left the camp for the St. Louis Medical School on July 4, 1942. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Dressed in her best clothes, Mae Yanagi, 7, waits with her pregnant mother, Kinuye Yanagi, right, to be bused to housing in the Tanforan Assembly Center by the War Relocation Authority. The Yanagi family spent several months in a horse stall at Tanforan before being sent to the Topaz Internment Camp in the Utah desert. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Mae Yanagi Ferral is photographed in the backyard of her Sacramento home on October 16, 2007. She was seven years-old in 1942 when her family was sent to the Tanforan Assembly Center, where they lived for several months in a horse stall before being sent to the Topaz Interment camp in the Utah desert.
Her father Satsuo Yanagi immigrated from Japan and started a successful business, the Meekland Nursery, in Hayward before WWII. Returning after the war they lost their home and business and her father was forced to start over as a gardener. Mae was the first in her family to go to college and had a career as a teacher. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Evacuee orphans of Japanese ancestry on July 1, 1942 at the Children's Village at the War Relocation Authority Center at Manzanar. Lilian Matsumoto, bottom left, a University of California graduate, and her husband, Harry, were superintendents of the Children's Village where 65 evacuee orphans from three institutions were housed. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Lillian Matsumoto, 95, photographed on December 6, 2006. Matsumoto and her husband Harry, convinced the government to establish a home for the Japanese evacuee orphans. They gathered children from the Shonien home in Los Angles, Maryknoll Catholic Home for Japanese Children and the Japanese Salvation Army home of San Francisco and established the Children's Village for orphaned children in the Manzanar Internment Camp during WWII. The village held 105 children from the ages of three months to 17 years. In 1944 they adopted one of the orphans Karly Matsumoto who is a South San Francisco city council member. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

THEN: Ben Kuroki speaks at a dinner held in his honor at the Heart Mountain Wyoming Internment center, which held 11,000 people of Japanese descent. Kuroki visited Heart Mountain in 1944. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Nebraska farmer Ben Kuroki volunteered for the U.S. Army Air Corps. He would become the first Japanese-American war hero, surviving 58 missions as an aerial gunner over Europe, North Africa and Japan. War Relocation Authority photo courtesy Ben KurokiNOW: Japanese American war hero Ben Kuroki, 90, at his home in Camarillo,California photographed on December 13, 2007. He flew 30 missions as a gunner aboard B-24's in Europe and 28 missions in the Pacific in B-29's.
" I didn't want to be called a Jap, I wanted to prove my loyalty," Kuroki said.
Kuroki spent 34 years as a journalist and retired as news editor for the Ventura Star Free Press in 1984. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

THEN: Hiroshi Hayashida, left, waves a flag as he and his family leave Seattle, Wash. on a train March 30, 1942 headed for the Manzanar Internment Camp in California. Hiroshi's sisters Susan Hayashida Fujita and Yasuko Hayashida Mito are in the window beside him, his mother, Nobuko Nishinaka Hayashida, is at the rear, center. The family arrived in Manzanar on April 1, 1942. Photograph by the Seattle StarNOW: Hiroshi Hayashida, Susan Hayashida Fujita and Yasuko Hayashida Mito photographed July 21, 2006 Seattle, Wash. on the railroad tracks where they left Seattle by train to be interned at Manzanar Internment Camp in California.
Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Yasuke Shimada, 57, walked half a mile from the train station to the Turlock, Calif. assembly center on May 2, 1942. The Shimada family then moved to the Gila River Internment Camp in Arizona. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Yoshi Shimada, 85, photographed on June 24, 2008.
His mother, Yasuke Shimada was 57 when Dorothea Lange photographed her walking from the train to the Turlock Assembly center May 2, 1942. The family then moved to the Gila River Internment Camp in Arizona. "We were the first group into the the unfinished camp and then we had to help dig trenches for the outhouse," Yoshi said. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Mitsunobu "Mits" Kojimoto, 19, arrives with his personal belongings at 2020 Van Ness Avenue as part of the contingent of 664 residents of Japanese ancestry, to be evacuated from San Francisco on April 6, 1942. Evacuees were to be housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of the war. Photograph by Dorothea LangeNOW: Mitsunobu "Mits" Kojimoto, 85, photographed on July 11, 2008 outside the building on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco where he waited for a bus to take him to the Santa Anita Assembly Center in 1942. At age 19, Kojimoto volunteered for the U.S. Army and joined the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, H company. He received the Bronze Star for his service in France and Italy. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr.

THEN: Shizuko Ina, 25, waits in line on April 25, 1942 in San Francisco, Calif. to register her family with other residents of Japanese ancestry for internment during WWII. Registration was required by Executive Order 9066 and all evacuees were housed in War Relocation Authority centers for the duration of WWII.
Photograph by Dorothea Lange.
NOW: Japanese American Satsuki Ina, 67, photographed in Sacramento, Calif. on February 14, 2012. Ina was born at the Tule Lake Internment camp to her second generation parents during WWII. The psychotherapist and retired CSUS professor produced two documentaries on the on the Japanese internment experience during WWII, one which won an Norhtern Califonia Emmy, "From aS Silk Cocoon."
Photograph by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

THEN: Willie Fusao Hayashida, 4, left, and Takeshi Ouchida eat a meal at the Mazanar Internment Camp during WWII. They were photographed by Ansel Adams and the picture appeared in Adams' book "Born Free and Equal" Photograph by Ansel AdamsNOW: Japanese American Willie Fusao Hayashida, 71, photographed at his home in Sacramento, Calif. on February 9, 2012. He was interned at Manzanar internment camp with his family during WWII. He is a retired Intel engineer. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki Jr.

THEN: Paul Kitagaki Jr.'s family waits to depart from Oakland in 1942 for internment. Kitagaki's grandmother, Juki Kitagaki, 53, is seated at left. Kimiko, his aunt, then 11, gets a pamphlet from a friend expressing her church's good wishes . Grandfather Suyematsu Kitagaki, 65, watches. The photographer's father Kiyoshi, 14, is at right.
NOW:The Kitagaki family returns in 2005 to the Oakland building where the older generations were sent off to camps. From left, the photographer's mother, Agnes Eiko Kitagaki; aunt Kimiko Kitagaki Wong; father, Kiyoshi Kitagaki; cousin Sharon Wong Young; and Paul Kitagaki Jr. Photograph by Paul Kitagaki, Jr., September, 18, 2005

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